JULY 6 2017

Welcome to Exchange Invest Daily Issue 1030. Interesting to think that on this day Frida Kahlo, Nancy Reagan and George W Bush were all born…which leads to the interesting water cooler point to ponder of how many astrologically driven personality facets they share.

A large quantity of assets may soon be offered on the market. Many are top quality and almost all are government stock. Apply in the first instance to the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed Officials Ready to Start Shrinking Portfolio in Months). Those with a less risk averse mindset may wish to apply to the ECB in due course.

PLY: ICE buys the rest of ENDEX as we look at the European gas benchmark battle to begin in earnest.

NEX Chairman To Repay Company For $28500 Political Donation
Bloomberg

PLY: I have to say I rather admire the move by Charles Greggson to pay the donations out of his own pocket, quite a hit from a gross 300K GBP package as Chairman. However, I worry about the prognostications of the fund management industry in this whole issue. It seems public support for a political view which correlates with your business is a bad thing whereas acting behind closed doors opaquely to promote your aims, being entirely anonymous if you will, is a preferred approach for the buy side. There is a point where corporate governance could snap into a form of corporate fascism and I fear here NEX have been unfairly attacked.

NEX noted: “It is clear that a number of them are opposed to public companies making modest political donations, even when supported by a strong business case.”

Clearing Houses Get Ultimatum To Fix Serious ‘Shortcomings’
Reuters

PLY: If the Fed are about to start the world’s largest ever financial garage sale, it’s only fair for the supranationals to start fretting about the post Homer Simpson Buffet (Premium content) situation. The push by the regulators may have a certain, er, overflow, into the waterfall of items needing resolution to, well, guarantee CCP resolution. Here’s hoping we never need it…but being born in the birthplace of the Titanic, we were schooled in the basics of precautionary risk management and crisis resolution at an early age.

NEX Group: NEX SEF Limited Went Live On 3 July 2017
MondoVisione

NEX SEF will initially allow customers to trade Non-Deliverable Forwards (NDFs) on NEX Markets’ EBS Market platform and will be used to launch additional products and services in the future.

PLY: Good.

Britain’s Finance Industry Faces ‘Tipping Point’ Over Brexit
Reuters

PLY: One of the singularly depressing features of modern life is time wasted by desperate NGOs who scaremonger headlines in order to bolster their relevance. In this case the CityUK consists of many great folk but has a frustrating habit of scooping headlines with tedious output bordering on dross. Hence there is a need for a technical paper but this quasi-apocalyptic pre-warning on access to labour reflects issues far beyond Brexit (AKA the pure dysfunction of British immigration management – qv a point to ponder next time you fly in to Gatwick or Heathrow…you’ll have plenty of time to do so. NB the blithering incompetent formerly in charge of the British immigration fiasco was made PM by her dunderheaded MPs on a range of opinions from “anybody but Boris” to wishing to be nannied by a new Mrs Thatcher). Quite what the CityUK hopes to achieve here other than looking impotent on the grand scale of British finance, is unclear. Quite why we also get the usual spineless creep claiming Brexit must be a disaster hiding behind the cloak of anonymity only adds to the tedium. Note to said weasel: speak out in public or don’t speak at all.

Lest you miss the point, permit me to deliver this with my favourite trowel: I’m deffo at the tipping point about dismal NGOs pushing agendas cluelessly and really a touch peeved at folks who are pushing agendas opaquely behind our backs.

London Stock Exchange Group Plc Transaction In Own Shares
MondoVisione

PLY: The delicious contrast: LSE buying its own shares in semi-perpetuity as the staff sell (having never truly ‘bought’ in the first place) while the Oslo Bors staff actually see their work success reflected by building their savings plan, as they repeat purchase stock with some incentives.

Private Markets

Wilmington Stock Exchange Up And Running, Finally
The News Journal

PLY: Wilmington is working at last, it seems with an OTC board for now.

PLY: Thomson Reuters launch Thomson Reuters Labs™ – The Incubator. Based in Zurich. One fear is that if TMR has entered the segment we must be close to a bubble top but at the same time one of their first entrants to the facility is that interesting new parishioner: Open Mineral which was first mentioned yesterday.

Tech Stocks Appear To Go Nuts After Computer Glitch
CNN

PLY: It seems only fair to highlight the CNN link for what amounts to the parish fake news story of the week. Essentially a couple of vendors suffered a pre-holiday oversight where they forgot about test data NASDAQ had earlier notified it was sending down the wires. The hapless and clueless brigade desperate for column inch filler then began regurgitating tech glitch scare stories. From this perspective, it looks much more like classic old fashioned human error provoked by thoughts of the barbecue ahead and not the job at hand.

…Impending choice of single bullet loaded revolvers or P45s at dawn at some vendors looming?

BSE, NSE May Consider Extending Trading Hours Only If Other One Moves First, But Ignore MSEI Move For Now
Financial Express

PLY: Right now the big two appear thoroughly contemptuous of MSEI (former MCX-SX) attempts to breakthrough…

Career Paths

PLY: Following the recent appointment of Professor Tan Cheng Han, SC as Chairman of the newly-established Singapore Exchange Regulation Pte. Ltd, Professor Hans Tjio has been appointed in his place as the Deputy Chairman of the Listings Advisory Committee (“LAC”). Mr Goh Kian Hwee has also been appointed as a member of the LAC with effect from 5 July 2017.

Livemint reports that Vikram Limaye May Take Charge As NSE CEO & MD On 17 July …which leaves me wondering if he too has had a spell wheeling the tea trolley around the executive floors as some wag once alleged of Xavier Rolet during his brief period of internal exile during the Merger of Equal Desperation madness.

With Canadian Tim Thurman having returned home to Canada, his replacement as CIO at ASX will be Dan Chesterman, most recently CIO at CommSec and Private Bank (part of CBA) to become ASX CIO in September.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding Tech Firm Sharein Aims To Boost Community Power
The Scotsman